| There are times, when confronted with yet another shoddy Defender remake, a version of Spy Hunter that appears to have had all the fun surgically removed or the 87th successive iteration of Pac Man, that the very idea of retro videogames makes me shudder. These games, says the internal voice, may have been great once but they don’t belong in the 21st century. Leave them be, let them rest in peace, their silicon souls unsullied by the harsh light of modern expectations. Leave us with MAME and a healthy dose of nostalgia and bother us not with Space Invaders XX…
But, just occasionally, a modern release of an old game turns up something rather special. At the risk of sounding like an over-enthusiastic press release, Hudson are showing the rest how it should be done. Four games (PC Kid, Adventure Island, Lode Runner and Star Soldier) from their glory years on the PC Engine resurrected, given a 21st century makeover and released, as budget titles no less, for the Gamecube. And, without putting too fine a point on it, they’re the best retro remakes I’ve ever seen.
There’s no doubting that these are modern games – they’ve all received a healthy new 3D look and feel with natty visual effects aplenty and a sonic overhaul to match. There’s none of those squint-and-you’ll-think-it’s-a-SNES moments that Nintendo seem so fond of here – these are true 21st century toys.
 
Spot the difference…
But what they haven’t done – at all – is mess with the core game mechanics - PC Kid (or the amusingly-titled ‘Bonk’ – if you’re American) and Adventure Island are still left-to-right runny-jumpy games, Star Soldier is still a balls-out bullet hell shooting extravaganza and Lode Runner is still, well, it’s still shit, but you can’t win ‘em all.
Yup, still dreadful.
Which is, of course, the crux of the matter. If you never liked the originals then you’ll find nothing here to change your mind, but if you’ve wasted the last few miserable years of your life waiting for a chance to relive the magic on modern hardware then this is a dream come true.
Ooh. A snail. How scary. Run away little claymation man!
Lode Runner is the only game in the set that has had a significant change with the move to a pseudo 3D (think Knight Lore) level layout, but it doesn’t break what little gameplay this series has. The rest of them survive pretty much intact – the same levels, the same gameplay mechanics, even the same patterns are there – and you really don’t mind at all.
In other words, this is everything that videogame players have been waiting and asking for for years. “Keep the gameplay intact,” we scream, “just update the graphics and let the quality shine through!”
The old times really were better. You don’t see scenes like this nowadays do you?
But these games’ biggest strength is also their weakness. We’ve already established that no-one sane has ever enjoyed a Lode Runner game, but Treasure Island doesn’t escape unharmed either. We’ve played Mario 64 now; do we really need to go back to the bad old days of “one missed jump and it’s game over” platform games? I think you know the answer. PC Kid and Star Soldier fare much better – possibly because they, even by the standards of 10 years ago, are simply better games.
In pure gaming terms then, Star Soldier and PC Kid are the standout stars here. Both of these games are worth £20 of today’s money, whether you’ve played the originals or not.
In terms of retro-repackaging though, it’s a very different story. Production values are high, real care has gone into bringing the games to the Gamecube and at no time do you feel like Hudson are taking the piss. After tasting of the “Will this do?” shoddiness of the Midway Arcade Treasures disc, or watching Nintendo brazenly produce GBA versions of the same NES games in half a dozen slightly different ways, these games are like manna from heaven.
AHCHAY, August
2004.
RODENT CASH RATING -
£20 for two, less for others
"Worth their weight in hu-cards."
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